hypercritical-co-uicpgh.txt (9234B)
1 • [1]Apps 2 • [2]About 3 • [3]Archive 4 • [4]Contact 5 • [5]RSS 6 7 [6]Hypercritical● 8 9 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 10 11 I Made This 12 13 January 11, 2024 at 1:51 PM by [7]John Siracusa 14 15 While the utility of [8]Generative AI is very clear at this point, the moral, 16 ethical, and legal questions surrounding it are decidedly less so. I’m not a 17 lawyer, and I’m not sure how the many [9]current and future legal battles 18 related to this topic will shake out. Right now, I’m still trying to understand 19 the issue well enough to form a coherent opinion of how things should be. 20 Writing this post is part of my process. 21 22 Generative AI needs to be trained on a vast amount of data that represents the 23 kinds of things it will be asked to generate. The connection between that 24 training data and the eventual generated output is a hotly debated topic. An AI 25 model has no value until it’s trained. After training, how much of the model’s 26 value is attributable to any given piece of training data? What legal rights, 27 if any, can the owners of that training data exert on the creator of the model 28 or its output? 29 30 A human’s creative work is inextricably linked to their life experiences: every 31 piece of art they’ve ever seen, everything they’ve done, everyone they’ve ever 32 met. And yet we still say the creative output of humans is worthy of [10]legal 33 protection (with some fairly narrow restrictions for works that are deemed 34 insufficiently differentiated from existing works). 35 36 Some say that generative AI is no different. Its output is inextricably linked 37 to its “life experience” (training data). Everything it creates is influenced 38 by everything it has ever seen. It’s doing the same thing a human does, so why 39 shouldn’t its output be treated the same as a human’s output? 40 41 And if it generates output that’s insufficiently differentiated from some 42 existing work, well, we already have laws to handle that. But if not, then it’s 43 in the clear. There’s no need for any sort of financial arrangement with the 44 owners of the training data any more than an artist needs to pay every other 45 artist whose work she’s seen each time she makes a new painting. 46 47 This argument does not sit well for me, for both practical and ethical reasons. 48 Practically speaking, generative AI changes the economics and timescales of the 49 market for creative works in a way that has the potential to disincentivize 50 non-AI-generated art, both by making creative careers less viable and by 51 narrowing the scope of creative skill that is valued by the market. Even if 52 generative AI develops to the point where it is self-sustaining without 53 (further) human input, the act of creation is an essential part of a life 54 well-lived. Humans need to create, and we must foster a market that supports 55 this. 56 57 Ethically, the argument that generative AI is “just doing what humans do” seems 58 to draw an equivalence between computer programs and humans that doesn’t feel 59 right to me. It was the pursuit of this feeling that led me to a key question 60 at the center of this debate. 61 62 Computer programs don’t have rights^[11]1, but people who use computer programs 63 do. No one is suggesting that generative AI models should somehow have the 64 rights to the things they create. It’s the humans using these AI models that 65 are making claims about the output—either that they, the human, should own the 66 output, or, at the very least, that the owners of the model’s training data 67 should not have any rights to the output. 68 69 After all, what’s the difference between using generative AI to create a 70 picture and using Photoshop? They’re both computer programs that help humans 71 make more, better creative works in less time, right? 72 73 We’ve always had technology that empowers human creativity: pencils, 74 paintbrushes, rulers, compasses, quills, typewriters, word processors, 75 bitmapped and vector drawing programs—thousands of years of technological 76 enhancement of creativity. Is generative AI any different? 77 78 At the heart of this question is the act of creation itself. Ownership and 79 rights hinge on that act of creation. Who owns a creative work? Not the pencil, 80 not the typewriter, not Adobe Photoshop. It’s the human who used those tools to 81 create the work that owns it. 82 83 There can, of course, be legal arrangements to transfer ownership of the work 84 created by one human to another human (or a legal entity like a corporation). 85 And in this way, value is exchanged, forming a market for creativity. 86 87 Now then, when someone uses generative AI, who is the creator? Is [12]writing 88 the prompt for the generative AI the act of creation, thus conferring ownership 89 of the output to the prompt-writer without any additional legal arrangements? 90 91 Suppose Bob writes an email to Sue, who has no existing business relationship 92 with Bob, asking her to draw a picture of a polar bear wearing a cowboy hat 93 while riding a bicycle. If Sue draws this picture, we all agree that Sue is the 94 creator, and that some arrangement is required to transfer ownership of this 95 picture to Bob. But if Bob types that same email into a generative AI, has he 96 now become the creator of the generated image? If not, then who is the creator? 97 98 Where is the act of creation? 99 100 This question is at the emotional, ethical (and possibly legal) heart of the 101 generative AI debate. I’m reminded of the [13]well-known web comic in which one 102 person hands something to another and says, “I made this.” The recipient 103 accepts the item, saying “You made this?” The recipient then holds the item 104 silently for a moment while the person who gave them the item departs. In the 105 final frame of the comic, the recipient stands alone holding the item and says, 106 “I made this.” 107 108 This comic resonates with people for many reasons. To me, the key is the second 109 frame in which the recipient holds the item alone. It’s in that moment that 110 possession of the item convinces the person that they own it. After all, 111 they’re holding it. It’s theirs! And if they own it, and no one else is around, 112 then they must have created it! 113 114 This leads me back to the same question. Where is the act of creation? The 115 person in the comic would rather not think about it. But generative AI is 116 forcing us all to do so. 117 118 I’m not focused on this point for reasons of fairness or tradition. Technology 119 routinely changes markets. Our job as a society is to ensure that technology 120 changes things for the better in the long run, while mitigating the inevitable 121 short-term harm. 122 123 Every new technology has required new laws to ensure that it becomes and 124 remains a net good for society. It’s rare that we can successfully adapt 125 existing laws to fully manage a new technology, especially one that has the 126 power to radically alter the shape of an existing market like generative AI 127 does. 128 129 In its current state, generative AI breaks the value chain between creators and 130 consumers. We don’t have to reconnect it in exactly the same way it was 131 connected before, but we also can’t just leave it dangling. The historical 132 practice of conferring ownership based on the act of creation still seems 133 sound, but that means we must be able to unambiguously identify that act. And 134 if the same act (absent any prior legal arrangements) confers ownership in one 135 context but not in another, then perhaps it’s not the best candidate. 136 137 I’m not sure what the right answer is, but I think I’m getting closer to the 138 right question. It’s a question I think we’re all going to encounter a lot more 139 frequently in the future: Who made this? 140 141 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 142 143 1. Non-sentient computer programs, that is. If we ever create sentient 144 computer programs, we’ll have a whole host of other problems to deal with. 145 [14]↩ 146 147 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 148 [15]← Previous 149 150 © 2010-2024 John Siracusa 151 152 153 References: 154 155 [1] https://hypercritical.co/apps/ 156 [2] https://hypercritical.co/about/ 157 [3] https://hypercritical.co/archive/ 158 [4] https://hypercritical.co/contact/ 159 [5] https://hypercritical.co/feeds/main 160 [6] https://hypercritical.co/ 161 [7] https://hypercritical.co/about/ 162 [8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_artificial_intelligence 163 [9] https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/27/24016212/new-york-times-openai-microsoft-lawsuit-copyright-infringement 164 [10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright 165 [11] https://hypercritical.co/2024/01/11/i-made-this#fn:1 166 [12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prompt_engineering 167 [13] https://nedroidcomics.tumblr.com/post/41879001445/the-internet 168 [14] https://hypercritical.co/2024/01/11/i-made-this#fnref:1 169 [15] https://hypercritical.co/2023/10/29/apples-blue-ocean